


Three Words

by Dark and Stormy (betagyre)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders' Electricity Trick, BDSM, Blood Mage Hawke, Burnplay, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Healer Anders (Dragon Age), Ice Play, Ignored Safeword, Knifeplay, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Possession, Safewords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 03:16:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15720870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betagyre/pseuds/Dark%20and%20Stormy
Summary: Hawke and Anders have a new way to improve his control over Justice/Vengeance and train the spirit to accept Anders’ will. He lets the spirit partially take over, sharing control, while Hawke is bound, no staff at hand. He can do anything to her, and she lets him know how to proceed with a word:Vengeance,harder.Justice,perfect.Mercy,too much—and Anders must assert full control. If he doesn’t, she’llusethe wounds he gives her.





	Three Words

**Author's Note:**

> Ooookay, since you clicked on this, you are probably perfectly all right with all the kinks that are tagged. If by some chance you _haven’t_ read the tags... _read the friggin’ tags_. And the description. This is an S &M game, and I hope that I’ve written that to be as hot as it ought to be, but it is potentially a dangerous one later on. For both participants.
> 
> I’ve tried writing in present tense (mostly) because it feels more immediate and suited for PWP than past tense, my usual preference for writing. As an aside, I this this may be both the most extreme kink I’ve ever written (including my one-shot “Shattered Glass” for the Harry Potter fandom) and also very near my personal upper limit for “extreme but still hot.” However, it may be less than I think it is. In either case, please be gentler to me than they are to each other :)

“You’re sure about this?” Anders asks, his gaze uneasy as he glances quickly at the object lying on the bed next to them as they sit side by side on the mattress. “This is more than we’ve ever attempted....”

Caitlyn Hawke breathes deeply. “I’m sure. If it doesn’t work out, we just... won’t do it again.”

He sighs. “Still, I hate the thought of really hurting you.”

She threads her fingers into his hair and gives him a smile. “You won’t. I won’t let you do anything to me that you can’t heal easily. It’ll be fine. Just trust me, and trust _yourself.”_

He barks out a quick, wry, cynical laugh at that. The point—the _secondary_ point—of these little exercises is to train Justice to accept Anders’ control so that he _can_ trust himself, and they both know what the primary purpose is.

It was somewhat of an accident that they discovered their mutual attraction to this, but once they _did_ discover it, it made perfect sense for a blood mage and a healer. He was initially shocked and angry that she had learned blood magic, the knowledge acquired not from a demon, but from a Tevinter book she’d taken as loot from one of their many jobs. But he grudgingly came to accept it, carving out a single exception for her even though Justice nagged at him that he shouldn’t—until one night when the spirit vied for control while they were in a heated moment. He’d bitten her tongue, her lips, her neck, scratched her shoulders, and shocked her with his magic, arcing lightning into her that was rather stronger than the startling pops she was used to and he was smugly proud of, to punish her for her wrongdoing—with the white-blue flashes of Fade light appearing below his skin and his eyes all the while. He’d been horrified when he managed to get Justice to retreat, sure that she would not want him to touch her again if he couldn’t control this _thing_ inside him even when they were in an intimate moment, but he would never forget the look of surprised, lustful delight on her face as she lay there below him, his fearless bird of prey. _“Let’s do that again sometime,”_ she’d said.

The thing was, he, _Anders,_ not Justice, enjoyed doing it too. Maker help him, but he’d _liked_ to mark her and make her respond to his magic with gasps of pain mixed with gasps of desire; he’d _liked_ to know that she _could_ have stopped him any time she wanted, could have used any of the markings he put on her to blast him to the other side of the room, but _hadn’t;_ and he’d liked to be the one, at the end, to fix her up, to make her almost purr, catlike, as his healing magic spread over and through her....

He is brought back to the present by the sounds of her increased breathing. She’s getting impatient, so he turns to face her. She is sitting on the bed, wearing nothing but her smallclothes, feet motionless on the floor, her gaze fixed on the pattern of the wallpaper in anticipation of whatever surprise he may have. She doesn’t ask for specific things anymore when they do this. They have moved to a new level of trust. Now, she never knows what he’s going to do next. It’s all up to him.

He breaks into a dark smile at that thought. “Get on the floor, maleficar.” He nods toward the foot of the bed. Without hesitation, she scrambles off the mattress and to the carpeted floor, kneeling beside the tall posts of their canopy bed and gazing up at him without a word. Her control is marvelous. It’s a challenge for him to maintain control as well, but for him, it’s harder by the nature of what he must do, what “control” means for him.

 _There she is,_ he tells Justice in his mind. _She’s ready._ He feels the spirit’s presence becoming stronger. This is a careful, delicate balance; he needs to give Justice enough control that it _is_ a test to train him to share that control with him and respect his, Anders’, will, but he can’t let the spirit seize him. Not when she has made herself vulnerable for him. He gets off the bed and gazes upon her as she stares back at him.

Her eyes widen as the Fade-light starts to glow and pop under the surface of his skin. In the next second, it blazes in his eyes.

“Look at you,” he says. “You’re the one who needs _discipline_ for what you do, not me.”

Yes—even though he is speaking with his own voice and not the spirit voice, _that’s_ a shared, mingled thought, and they both know it. For him, it’s part of the game; for Justice... not entirely.

He glowers for another second before grabbing her wrists, holding them tightly in a single hand while pulling them upward as far as they’ll go on the bedpost without actually pulling her to her feet. She’s no longer able to kneel fully; her backside is off the floor. He uses a force spell to bind her wrists in place and gets on one knee himself to glare at her.

“A mage has so many choices. What to do first?” he muses, his gaze not breaking from hers.

She stares back, refusing to let herself speak.

“I _said,_ what should I do to you, blood mage?”

She realizes what he wants to hear. “Anything,” she says. “Whatever you think I deserve.”

“That’s right.” He places his hands on her sides, just below her breasts. _“Three words,”_ he says, the brief phrase somehow dark and intimidating.

She takes a sharp breath, almost a gasp, readying herself. She knows what that means. He is going to do what occurs to him, without verbal warning if he so chooses, and she is to respond with only one of three words to let him know how to proceed.

She knows what the possible spells are, but she is still startled when the sharp bite of cold hits her skin on each side. He trails a coating of tiny ice crystals down her sides to her hips, then across her body and upward again. When he reaches her breasts, he hesitates, but only for a moment. She closes her eyes as his fingers, ice-cold, linger below her hardened nipples almost threateningly.

“Look me in the eye,” he orders.

She snaps her eyes open and fixes her gaze upon his. The light that is radiating from his eyes matches the element that he is using on her right now, she thinks idly—and then, in the next moment, he intensifies the spell. Instead of a dusting of frost, chunks of solid ice the size of jewels appear just around her nipples, adhering to her skin—for now. She muffles a cry as they start to melt and trickles of icy cold water run down her chest.

He leans over, keeping hands covering her breasts as he teases them with his fingers, still cold, still tingling with pent-up magic. “Well?” he whispers in her ear. He hesitates for a moment before giving her a sharp nip on her earlobe, eliciting a yelp from her, then moves away to give her a querying look.

She breathes deeply as the frost and ice continue to melt and turn to cold water, but she is not struggling against the bond very much. She fixes her gaze with his. One corner of her mouth is turned upward, he notes.

 _“Vengeance,”_ she says.

He breaks into a smirk himself. “Good.” That is their code word for “not enough; harder,” and he would be disappointed if she didn’t want any more than this yet. He slides his hands down her chest to her hips and obliges.

She cannot help but jump a bit as he sends shocks of static charge across her skin, much stronger than she ever feels when it is cold and dry and she touches something conductive. This leaves a continued tingle over most of her body for a couple of seconds after the initial shock, and she gasps at the sensation. “Oh Maker,” she bursts out.

He raises an eyebrow at her and lifts his right hand from her hip momentarily. She braces herself—

He smacks her arse hard, his hand a plate of ice. He keeps it in place rather than lifting it, making sure to increase the spell ever so slightly, making her squirm from the cold and the frost that rapidly turns to ice water. “Not a word unless it’s one of _those three.”_

She bites her lip, looks into his eyes, and nods. He moves his hand back to her hip, pausing there as he readies his magic again. When he is touching her, she can feel the arcane energy gathering in his hands, his fingertips—

A blast of cold strikes her hips and ripples outward. She glances down and nearly gasps; he has covered her chest and hips with thick frost, and it trails down into her smallclothes. In fact... she can sense the chips of solid ice sliding down them, feel the bite of wet cold as they make contact with her center and melt. She suppresses a moan as best she can and tries not to squirm too heavily.

The frost starts to melt immediately, leaving trails of ice-cold water running down her heaving chest and into her smalls. He stares at his handiwork for another second, then grabs her bound hands and breaks his own spell that was holding them to the bedpost. Keeping them in a physical grip, he pulls her to her feet and recasts the spell, binding them much higher. She has to get on her toes. He admires her body stretched out in front of him, white frost turning clear by the second, freezing water trickling down in rivulets.

 _“Vengeance.”_ Hawke’s voice is barely more than a whisper as she shakes from all the sensations.

Anders raises his eyebrows at that but does not argue. “Just as you deserve,” he says. That feels like Justice’s opinion of the matter to him, and she does widen her eyes as though she’s surprised by something, perhaps the intensity of the Fade-light blazing out of his own... but he has this. Justice is there, but it’s fine. He gets on his knees and pulls down her smalls. He notes as her thighs tense in anticipation and raises his eyebrows again at the sight of how wet she already is, glancing upward to meet her gaze with his, a wicked smile on his face. She gazes back defiantly.

He takes a deep breath and places each of his hands on her thighs. Slowly, he leaves a trail of thick frost in his wake—she shudders at the sensation, her legs wobbling—until he reaches her center. His fingers are as cold as icicles, magic and ice dancing at his fingertips, ready to explode. He plunges one, then two from each hand into her slippery folds, wet with meltwater and her own desire for him. She lets out a shriek from the cold, then another, louder shriek as he increases the spell, leaving behind rounded chips of ice. Another deep breath, and he plunges his mouth forward, sucking her clit into his mouth as he continues to produce bits of ice and her thighs compress around him, her muscles shuddering in time with her breaths.

Wanting to give her a surprise again, he abruptly shifts the type of magic and sends a jolt of electricity into her, feeling the pop himself through his mouth.

 _“Fuck,”_ she hisses in spite of herself.

He changes back and produces another, thicker bit of ice, this piece marble-sized, and holds it in place with his hand. “What?” he says, his tone a warning. “What did I tell you that you could say?”

“F... Justice. _Justice,”_ she says as he rolls the melting marble of ice against her core while dipping an ice-cold finger inside.

They had not used the spirit’s actual name as a code word at first, unsure of how that would work, but once they did try it, it entered their permanent repertoire. While the spirit was sharing control with Anders, he seemed to react very positively to hearing her say the word that way. _Perfect, just right_ to her, and, to him—them— _just what I deserve_.

He doesn’t go any harder on her, but he does keep his fingers where they are, at this temperature, sliding them in and out of her while he teases her clit with his tongue and thumbs and rubs the piece of ice against her until it finally melts at the same time she climaxes. He draws back, his hands between her thighs, spreading her slick wetness and forcing her legs to remain apart so she cannot even clench them together, leaving her to ride out her orgasm herself without any further contact. With her hands bound and additional relief from him denied as well, she’s more readily able to approach additional peaks later, and he very much wants her to.

She almost collapses when he releases her arms from the bedpost, her legs are so shaky, but he holds her around the waist and pulls her around to the side of the bed, promptly shoving her onto the mattress on her back. He mounts her immediately and unhooks the fasteners of his coat, tossing the heavy garment to the floor. He follows with the tunic he wears under it and unfastens his breeches, removing the clothes and tossing them on top of his coat. Although the view is quite nice, she is vaguely disappointed; she likes the feeling of the feathers on that coat....

He notices the look on her face and smiles. “Don’t worry. I kept those feathers you found for me at that... _party.”_ He opens the drawer of the nightstand and takes them out, the three arcane feathers that she picked up for him on the Orlesian nobleman’s hunting grounds. Their finds were the only good things to come out of that... but no, he won’t let himself get distracted. She breathes deeply, already imagining the sensation against her bare skin....

He leers down at her. “You don’t get to feel this yet.” He sets the three feathers aside. Beside them on the pillow, the object they have not yet used gleams bluish-white in the Fade light radiating from his eyes.

She stares back, heart still pounding from her climax. “I should hope not.”

He lunges forward and grabs her shoulders roughly, pushing her deeply into the pillow and mattress. “Three words.” He trails his hands down her arms, leaving a light trail of frost in his wake, then grabs her wrists again and forces them upward at an angle toward the bedpost to his left. He attaches them there with a force spell and descends upon her with, fittingly, a vengeance.

The dusting of frost that he left on her arms is the last encore for that element, at least for now. He intends to move on to stronger, more intense, and _riskier_ types of magic. He knows what she is expecting, too, and decides once again to surprise her first. Placing his palms over her chest, he takes a deep breath and sends a jolt of charge into her.

She actually twitches on the bed, and would have arched her back off the mattress if not for the fact that he was holding her down. Her eyes go wide from surprise and the spell itself. She exhales sharply, then inhales.

“Vengeance.”

He draws back, surprised, his eyebrows raised in question, wanting her to confirm that’s what she meant.

 _“Vengeance,”_ she insists. Her green eyes are bold and excited.

 _Well, if that’s what she wants...._ Anders readies his magic, moves his hands down her body to her flat abdomen, and sends another jolt into her, this one stronger.

A sizzle of electricity arcs through her body, making her heart skip a beat, making some of the shorter hairs on her head actually stand on end, and knocking the breath entirely out of her. It lasts for no more than four seconds, but they are four intense and unnerving seconds in which she cannot move even to breathe. During that time, he looms over her, gazing at her with those partially-possessed eyes, his hands on her and keeping her pinned against the bed. _He could do anything to me right now and I could not stop him,_ she thinks in a flash—and with that thought, a throb of desire pulses from her core.

Still, that... was intense... and she’s not sure she should have him make it any stronger. He’s startled too, having taken a shock from the contact with her, gazing at her with respect and a certain degree of trepidation that she may ask him to intensify it even more.

 _“Justice,”_ she gasps, breathing heavily, taking in lungfuls of air.

Relief fills his expression at that, and a little flash in his eyes. “Yes, it is,” he says. He reaches for the feathers and notes, with pleasure, that her eyelids flutter shut for a moment at the sight. He spreads them into a fan and trails it lightly over her chest, one feather tickling each breast and one trailing a line down the middle of her chest. She gasps and sighs in pleasure at the contact. He lifts them and brings them down again, closer together, now on one side of her face, starting just under her earlobe. She moans as they tickle her neck and shoulders. “What now, love, what now....” He pauses, sets the feathers aside, and pretends to contemplate. She tenses beneath him, eyes wide, pupils full.

In a fluid motion, he grabs her shoulders and flips her over. The spell binding her hands adjusts on its own to her new position. He climbs on top of her, swinging one leg across her to hold her in place. Her taut back muscles ripple before him in anticipation, and he feels himself harden even more than he already has at the sight. _But first...._

He eases down and pulls her legs far apart, casting force spells to hold them in place. She twitches ever so slightly on the bed, muffling a gasp as she feels air against her center and knows that he is right there and about to do _something_ to her and she cannot snap her legs back together to stop him or even obtain a sort-of release that way....

He summons a different type of magic. The fingers that had been icicles, then tingling with charge at their tips, now burn with heat just beyond the surface of his skin, magic ready to burst out.

Only a few seconds have elapsed, but she is having difficulty containing herself. She lets out a shaky breath from the uncertainty of what he is doing, when she will feel something, and _what_ she will feel next. He pauses for a second longer, smiling, and she shivers again.

In the next moment, he brings his palms together, creating a bubble of heated air. He lets his hands hover right over her sensitive spot, a hint of the heat to come radiating though the spaces between his fingers. She trembles in anticipation, and he can see how wet she still is and how eager she’s rapidly becoming again. The heat builds between his palms, threatening to flame....

In a single motion, he presses his hands against her core, opening his palms, letting the heat spread across her most sensitive area. She actually screams as she twitches violently on the bed, her legs strained against their magical bonds. It’s sharp and quick, but it is a shriek nonetheless. She buries her face in the pillow to muffle something. He shifts his element and pops a spark between her legs, just removed from her center, but close enough that she can feel it.

He pulls back and gazes at her as she tries to still her motions. She’s breathing heavily, struggling, muffling curses against the pillow in an attempt to keep him from hearing, so that he won’t punish her for speaking. Too late. He’s already heard more than one “fuck,” “damn you,” and a “Maker’s flaming breath, Anders” from her after the spark. _If I have to control myself—and him—then so does she,_ he thinks, or Justice thinks. He’s not sure now. It seems to be both of them.

“What was that? Repeat what you said,” he orders her.

She shakes her head, then buries her mouth in the pillow again, aware that he’s going to let her have it for that direct defiance, readying herself for whatever he decides to do. The excitement and desire build in her again from not knowing....

She hasn’t told him to stop, hasn’t used their word for that, so he isn’t worried. He leans over, barely an inch from her right ear. “I heard all of it,” he says, punctuating the unspoken threat with a bite. “You are allowed to say _three words_ and you know what they are. I didn’t hear _any_ of them in that outburst.”

She tenses again. So that’s how he’s going to play? She likes that; it sends a thrill down her back when he talks to her that way, but she will also make him work for her. _“Vengeance,”_ she hisses.

“That’s right,” he says. “That’s _exactly_ what I’m going to show you. I’ll give you a _reason_ to cry out.” Without hesitation, he heats his fingertips again and brings both of his hands down hard on her shoulder blades, intensifying the spell as he makes contact and starts to draw little circles with his heated fingertips. A tiny flame appears momentarily.

She snarls incoherently, thrashing, as he maintains the spell and moves down her back quickly. He switches his left hand to crackle once again with sparks of lightning, little spidery lights arcing between his fingertips. He brings this hand right on top of the burn marks, making this time rather more painful. Her back feels like it is on fire now, and yet, somehow, despite that, the heat—the vulnerability—and, yes, the pain make her start to feel the familiar thrum of arousal peaking once again. She lets out another muffled shout, which she attempts to bury in the pillow, but he chuckles darkly in satisfaction anyway.

With fiery heat in one hand and lightning sparks in the other, he trails his way down toward the small of her back, feeling energized and increasingly giddy at the livid pink marks he leaves behind in his wake. When he reaches the sensitive spot, he instantly switches his magic back to ice, but the ice is just as intense as the heat—almost fire—had been. The change startles her, and yet another shriek escapes her as he presses the suddenly cold tips hard against her. She tries to kick, but cannot. Feeling somewhat lightheaded, he brings his hand down hard on her backside, a slap of icy cold once again. She muffles another outcry into her pillow.

Anders gazes back at the reddening marks he’s put on her back, blinking. _That must’ve hurt,_ he suddenly thinks. _No wonder she’s losing control. Am I? That felt rather like Justice... or Vengeance... when I was doing that to her...._ And yet, it is still all right, because he _hasn’t_ lost control. That kind of burn stings briefly, but it won’t leave a visible wound even if he doesn’t heal it later—and he will.

She is breathing deeply, her body heaving, making the entire mattress move up and down. He expects that this is all she can take of this.

_“Vengeance.”_

He blinks. What did she just say?

 _“Vengeance.”_ Defiance fills her voice as she spits the word at him. This is a game, he reminds himself, and she is fully playing it. It’s a dominance game now and she is challenging him. She doesn’t think he’ll do it. Although she is magically bound and he’s literally on top of her, if he _doesn’t_ up the ante, she wins.

“All right then,” he says. He looks her over, gazing at the reddish marks that he just created. His gaze then shifts toward the head of the bed, where the object he has avoided using—his knife, the one normally attached to his belt—rests. He pauses, considering. _Yes,_ Justice—or Vengeance?—says in his mind. _That’s what you should do. She asked for it._ He contemplates that thought as soon as he has it. _Yes, she literally did ask for it,_ Anders reassures himself— _and she also has it coming,_ whispers the spirit more darkly in his mind.

Still, he has never used that on her before and is uneasy about the idea. In fact, this gets mightily close to the actions involved in using blood magic, and Anders is not sure that he can do it. Justice can, however. With that realization, Anders grants the spirit a little more control.

The light of the Fade blazes strongly from his eyes and flares beneath his skin. He moves back up the bed, releases her ankles, flips her over to face him, mounts her again, and takes the knife.

“Oh,” she gasps, eyes wide at the sight of it in his hand. Her back is still burning, especially from this new contact with the bed sheets, and her core is throbbing from her growing arousal. Her heart begins to thump quickly and loudly, the sound filling her ears, as he moves down the bed again with the shining blade tight in his grip. He settles between her legs and puts his left hand on her hip, holding her down. Her eyes, wide as plates, gaze at him.

 _Gently at first,_ he tells himself—or tells Justice; he’s no longer entirely sure—as he brings the blade down. The sharp edge touches her skin just under her ribs.

 _Careful._ He notes the very, very thin, hairline mark appearing on her skin from the razor-sharp blade. _Don’t hurt her._

She is trying to control her breathing, to keep from making any sudden gasps or, especially, intakes of breath that will result in a change of pressure from his blade. Somehow, he’s got the tension absolutely perfect. There’s a tickle, especially as it passes over her narrowed waist, then a tingle, a sudden sting at the realization of the cut, and a heat generated by her own body around the faint line.

She feels a wet drop trickle down towards the mattress. He leans over and catches it with a finger before it can reach the sheets. She breathes in. That’s her lifeblood and an always accessible source of magic for her. He won’t do magic that way, but _she_ can if she chooses.

He lifts the blade and gazes upon his handiwork with some surprise that he actually managed to do it. He’s marking her, doing things to her that he will have to heal. She has _let_ him do this to her and he will need to heal it, pour his own magic into her body, and the thought of that makes him want to just end this at once and take her and make her scream for him, gasp his name into his ears. He gets harder at the very thought. But no—it’s not time yet. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and looks up at her questioningly, eyebrows raised.

 _Can I take more of it?_ she asks herself. She considers. That was... actually not nearly as painful as the fire spell that he had just used on her.

 _“Vengeance,”_ she whispers, but her voice has a definite shake to it this time. They’ve never done this before....

He breathes deeply, apparently calming his nerves. She suddenly wonders if she is asking more of him than he is comfortable doing.

“Anders?” she says, breaking the rules for a moment. “Are you... do you—?”

He breathes in and out again. She is questioning him. She’s questioning _them._ “I am a healer. I am a _master_ of careful work,” he says, arrogance suffusing his voice. “Don’t doubt me for a second.” He drops the blade on the mattress. She feels a rush of anticipation when he lifts up her legs and slings them over his shoulders, her knees bent on each side of his neck, and a moment of trepidation when he picks up the blade again and gazes at her intensely, the unearthly light of the Fade spirit reflecting off the silver blade and searing though her, a wicked smirk on his face that both excites and unnerves her. She takes a deep, involuntary breath.

The first sensation against the inner thigh of her left leg is a tickle, then a sting, a sting that is a bit sharper than the one she felt, and still feels, on her side. She suppresses a swearword, biting her lip hard to avoid speaking.

He pauses for a second, then runs the fingers of his left hand over the spot, not to heal it, but to add heat. She bites her lip harder at the sudden rush of heat, the strangely delicate pain, and the accompanying pooling of desire between her legs that she _knows_ just happened because she _felt_ the rush, and she also knows that he must be able to see....

A matching curiously sensual sting lashes the inside of her other thigh, followed immediately by—this time—not heat, but biting cold. She cannot control it; a moan bursts from her lips.

She hasn’t told him to stop. He feels excited, as if he’s giving over a bit more control to Justice, and he decides in a flash that he’s going to make her say their final word this time. He’s going to make her skip saying _Justice,_ skip telling him that what he’s doing is just right, skip saying his name.... _Wait, excuse me, whose name?_ Anders’ own voice objects sharply, but he ignores that... and go straight to the last word, the word that is somewhat unnatural for him but that he’s beginning to understand from his time in this world. He is still going to make this reckless, overconfident blood mage beg him for—

The light in Anders’ eyes flares as brightly as it ever has when the spirit has uncontested control, and he responds with a sudden movement. The blade bites into her skin on top of her thigh. There is no tickle with this, just a sharp pain, and she feels not a single drop of blood slowly emerging from a delicate hairline cut, but drops rapidly growing and trickling in little rivulets.

 _“Mercy,”_ she finally bursts out.

He pauses, registering that word, the word they agreed upon. She observes as the intensity of the light in his eyes dims a bit. Slowly, carefully, he sets the blade down. She breathes in and out, relieved.

 _No. She doesn’t deserve any; she is a blood mage, risking the attention of demons that mean her nothing but harm, and if she does use her blood, I will seize on the weakness and impart the lesson to her of just what can happen._ Harmlessly, of course. He knows he’s a _good_ spirit, and he doubts he can be in two minds at once for more than a second even if he wanted to, but it would still scare her to feel his presence in her mind at all, however briefly. He picks up the blade again and runs the sharp edge across her other thigh. It bites just as hard and bleeds just as quickly.

 _“Mercy!”_ she says sharply, her eyebrows coming together as she glares hotly at him.

 _Cut it out! She said to stop!_ Anders thinks frantically—but there is someone else thinking as well, and he’s given more control to Justice than ever before when they have played this game. He glances quickly at her. She is focusing intently on something, apparently the blood that trickles from her thighs. It’s obvious what she’s about to do. She does not trust Justice in full control, ignoring her orders because she is vulnerable, and he cannot blame her. She would be furious if she knew, as he did, what Justice was actually trying to do.

 _I’m taking over,_ he thinks as intensely as he has ever thought anything. The other presence resists, but he doesn’t care about her in the same way that Anders does. He cares, but it’s not a tender sort of caring. Justice thinks she needs to be taught a lesson about dangerous magic; Anders just wants her to enjoy this. He has that same intense thought again. _I am taking over, now. You aren’t going to do that to her. She is mine; leave it to me and step aside._

The training, and the years of experience that the spirit has in the world now, seem to have paid off. Reluctantly, but ultimately willingly, the other presence recedes to the back of his mind, an observer again. He tosses the knife to the floor.

“Fuck it,” he bursts out, staring in shock at her, his eyes warm brown and normal, his gaze now completely his own. “I am so sorry—”

“It’s all right.” He can tell she’s proud of him for taking control as they intended.

He is not so sure that it’s “all right” at all, but this is his Caitlyn Hawke, fearless as always. He breathes heavily, gathers his magic, and lifts his palms over the bleeding marks on her thighs, closing his eyes as he sends waves of bluish healing magic at them.

This always feels wonderful and now is no exception. Warmth and an unutterable sense of closeness to him fill her as his magic, his unique mark on the Fade, spreads through her, closing the cuts. He lets out a gasp and presses his hands against her skin, sending another wave as he makes contact and making her cry out in pleasure. The magic spreads to the other, thinner cuts and some of the burns on her lower back as well. It brings back the sensations that have been temporarily sidelined. Suddenly she wants very, very much to finish what they started—but like this, with just him now.

“Let’s not stop,” she whispers to him as he leans over to kiss her on the side of her face, next to her ear. “You haven’t had anything out of this yet and you’ve done all the work. It’s an... _injustice,”_ she adds with a wry smile.

He pauses. He has been distracted, but... yes. Although he has enjoyed watching her reactions, the pleasure so far has been hers.

“Well,” he says, a grin spreading across his face, “we can’t have _that,_ certainly. Let’s remedy it.” He lingers over her for another moment before joining their lips together in a brief, but incredibly intense, kiss. He pulls away, regarding her as if she is the most beautiful woman in the world, and then reaches for the three arcane feathers he had set aside. He fans them out between his fingers and thumb again, smiling as her face lights up.

He brings them down the side of her face, lingering for just a moment in the spot where her neck and shoulder meet, tickling very lightly before continuing down her chest. She breathes deeply and closes her eyes.

“Look at me. I want to see your eyes, wide and full for _me.”_

Her eyes snap open at once, and her lips part for a quick intake of breath. His breath catches in his chest too; her eyes are absolutely brimming with desire. With an instinctive movement, he trails the feathers rapidly down her abdomen, passing over the juncture of her hip with her leg, then across and up the same path on her other side.

She seems momentarily to lose control of her legs and kicks them, surprising him—but he reacts quickly, sending two force spells at each of her ankles once again, binding them in place, denying her any contact on her most sensitive spot just as before. She struggles visibly, trying to find _some_ way to dissipate the tension. An almost vocal gasp bursts from her throat that sends a chill down his spine.

He has waited so long, it feels to him, and he cannot explain why, but somehow this particular cry—this gasp, this twist against his binding spells, is too much for him at last. With a gasp of his own, he tosses the feathers to the floor, grips her hips, and fills her to the hilt.

She is already very close, but he wants to make it last for both of them. He slows his pace as much as he can stand, clutching her hips, her sides, her shoulders for support, pausing for what feels like an eternity to lean over her and nip each of her ears the way she likes so much. He feels her muscles clench around him in that pause, sees her trembling, and realizes that she is going to come apart right now if he doesn’t start moving again. He doesn’t want that yet. He pulls almost fully out, making her cry out in disapproval and need.

Breathing heavily, trying his best to control himself— _not yet, not yet,_ he tells himself—he lifts both of his hands away from her and allows cold to gather at his fingertips, then brings them down to her hips, intensifying the spell as he traces light frost down her curves. Her eyes pop in surprise, she hisses his name sharply at the return of this sensation, and she begins to shake and shudder at his touch again.

Hearing her say his name like that, those eyes wide and dark, almost makes him come right there, but he has just enough control left not to do it. He holds her hips to brace himself, his fingertips still freezing, and fills her once again.

She swallows another gasp. _“Vengeance,”_ she breathes, eyes fixed upon his face, intense and determined, exactly what he loves most about her.

He isn’t making her use the three words anymore, but hearing her say that brings out a wicked smile. “As you wish.”

His movements are not actually slow, but in this moment, it seems to both of them as if they are. He removes his right hand from her hip, brings it down to her core, and presses an icy fingertip against her pearl.

She muffles a shriek and thrashes beneath him, legs and arms straining against the magical bonds. But he’s not finished.

 _She asked for vengeance, and that’s what she’s going to get,_ Anders thinks. He changes to a different element and sends a pulse of heat into her. She strains against her bonds again, pausing for a moment that seems to last forever, before a surge of her own magic rushes through her and breaks the spells he has used on her ankles. In a single movement, she wraps them around his waist, forcing him in even deeper, compressing his still-hot hand between his body and hers, sending a final wave over her body repeatedly. She is just able to hear his own gasp and feel his shudder as this movement sends him over the edge too, and in the ensuing, increasing burst of arcane power, she finds that her arms are free as well. She grabs at his hair, tugging hard enough to hurt, but he doesn’t care. He’s nipping at her neck and digging his fingers into her sides as they ride out their releases. Vaguely she’s aware that the bed draperies are actually fluttering slightly.

At some point they are able to let go of each other and untangle themselves. He rolls on his back, stares upward, and barks an exhausted invocation of the Maker. She chuckles and curls on her side against him.

“You probably need a full-body healing—” he begins to say, but she takes his arm, nestles against his shoulder, and shakes her head.

“It can wait till morning.”

“You’re sure? You’re not going to have any aches or bruises that’ll interfere with sleep?”

“I don’t think _anything_ will interfere with sleep after that. That was incredible. _You_ are incredible.” She leans in and pecks his nose. “Both of you,” she cannot resist adding.

Anders can see the smirk on her face in the dim light and knows that she’s trying to get a reaction, but he _never_ minds obliging her. “He appreciates that almost as much as I do, I’m sure,” he drawls. “Now about the blood magic....”

He’s trying to get a reaction out of her too, and she knows it. “Oh, hush and go to sleep.”

He laughs once more and curls against her.


End file.
